OAKLAND — The attorneys who represented more than 100 plaintiffs in a lawsuit stemming from the Riders police misconduct scandal said Tuesday they will seek to extend their 2003 settlement with the city of Oakland because they don’t believe the Police Department can move into compliance with court-mandated reforms before the agreement is set to expire.

A federal court’s oversight of the settlement is set to end in January 2010. Attorneys Jim Chanin and John Burris said on the same day police Chief Wayne Tucker announced his resignation effective Feb. 28 that they would try to work with the city to agree on an extension.

Chanin and Burris said they believed the Police Department would not be in compliance with the court’s orders well before Tucker — who has made the settlement reforms a central focus — announced his decision to step down.

The department has been rocked by a number of high-profile incidents lately, and Chanin said he sees no way the police force can be fully be reformed within the current time frame.

“The city police have to show that they can govern themselves without so many scandals arising and with personnel that can command the confidence of the public and follow the Constitution,” he said. “The existing situation that we have now is an affront to the many Oakland police officers who do a good job and do not get involved in these kinds of situations.”

The attorneys said they will likely ask the court to find the city in contempt if an extension is not agreed upon.

A Jan. 8 report by a team of monitors assigned by the court to keep watch over the department found that the department had moved into partial or full compliance with 41 of 51 tasks required by the court. But the monitors’ report also noted that the department had come under fire for its handling of the 2007 killing of journalist Chauncey Bailey as well as allegations officers falsified affidavits to obtain search warrants.

Since the report, it was revealed the FBI is investigating a number of high-profile problems at the department, including allegations that Capt. Edward Poulson, head of the internal affairs division, beat a drug suspect who later died in 2000 and then interfered as the department tried to investigate the matter.

Poulson was suspended with pay last week. He was a lieutenant when the incident occurred.

City Attorney John Russo said it was premature to publicly discuss a possible settlement extension and said he wants to see what conclusions Judge Thelton Henderson and the monitoring team reach in the next couple of months.

“I think it’s premature to discuss it,” he said. “We’ll wait until the next hearing. There’s a hearing coming up in a couple of months, and we’ll see what kind of (progress) we’re making at the time of the hearing, and we’ll see what Judge Henderson has to say, and we’ll see what the independent monitoring team has to say.”

The two parties are set to meet in Henderson’s court in March, but the monitors aren’t expected to complete a new report until a few months later.

The settlement initially called for the reforms to be completed by 2008, but Henderson extended the settlement two years in March 2007, saying the department made virtually no progress on the reforms in the first couple of years of the settlement — before Tucker was hired.

Capt. Paul Figueroa, the department’s inspector general, declined to discuss the possibility of the settlement being extended but said, “We’re fully committed to the negotiated settlement agreement and making full compliance. We’re going to continue to move forward with the terms of the agreement.”

Chanin said Tucker’s resignation could create a “vacuum of leadership” that could make compliance more difficult.

“I don’t think his departure is going to solve any problems,” he said.

But Burris said Tucker’s departure was not the determining factor in the attorneys’ push to extend the settlement.

“It doesn’t turn on Chief Tucker at all,” he said. “Obviously, if Chief Tucker were here and he’s working aggressively toward getting it done, and he gets is done, then it would be done. “… He is a proven steward, if you will, but there certainly wasn’t an indication from our point of view that he necessarily gets it done just because he’s here.”

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.